Oklahoma's Tar Creek To Get New Life As Wetlands

NewsOn6.com

UNDATED -- The old Tar Creek area is getting a new life. Northeast Oklahoma A & M College is teaming up with the Nature Conservancy and the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma to make the superfund site near Picher a wetlands.

The project will use about $400,000 in grant money from the Environmental Protection Agency to build a four-acre retention pond with a couple more acres of wetlands around it. The school says the new partnership will give students a hands-on opportunity to work with scientists, on land that butts right up to the school's property.

"Primarily the purpose of that is to study the sediment run-off out of Tar Creek which, as most people know, has been contaminated for years," said Jeff Hale, Northeastern A & M College president.

"It gives us a real-life project to start this partnership off with."

The partnership is the first of its kind between the Nature Conservancy and a college.